A recipe for living with cancer.

Posts tagged ‘insecticides’

Do you watch Dr. Oz? I flip channels and if I happen on his show I will pause and watch. How could I not watch as he or the promo entices: “these three things are on your must eat list to lose weight naturally” or, “these things found in your refrigerator will make you look 10 years younger” or, “10 minutes of these exercises will shape your thighs and buns” or, “these simple ingredients will naturally lower your blood pressure.” Yesterday I paused and saw Dr. Furhman and his eat for health plan, so I watched and became very upset.

I am all for natural and healthy diets, have been for years. I buy organic to decrease our pesticide load and try to help the earth; we have always eaten a healthy diet with less and less meat as we’ve grown older, and heck I became a vegan 2 years ago to lower my ‘high’ normal cholesterol and lipid levels and it worked. Since chemo is over I am back to vegetarian and will work my way back to vegan once the surgeries are over.

What I find overwhelming with Dr. Oz is the quantity of information constantly thrown at you when you watch. Were we to implement every single suggestion popping up on his daily show can you imagine what we would be doing? Eating a panopoly of foods to– decrease stress, stop a headache, ease a cough, decrease blood pressure, prevent cancer, get better skin, sounder sleep, better mental acuity, live longer and more. Now was it the chickpeas for the cough or the headache or the sex drive?? Or popping supplements to increase energy, stop the aging, help your sex life, melt fat fast, fight fatigue and ease arthritis. With all the exercise suggestions and demos we could probably do a different exercise routine every day for a month without repeating.

Dr. Oz is a great doctor and his show does a great service and after a while I have to say to myself…to much information. We are all individuals and some of these things will work for us and some won’t, and some are extremely expensive. My issue watching yesterday was when Dr. Furhman spoke about preventing breast cancer eating basically a vegan diet. It made me very upset.

I sit watching this while battling breast cancer, and am a tad concerned when (I am sure due to the shortness of the piece) many other factors were completely left off the table.

The environment, toxic chemicals on food, genetics all play a role in breast cancer and I came away from the show feeling guilty. Yes guilty — for not having followed a better diet all these years. Maybe I could have prevented breast cancer. I am sure this was not the message the show intended to portray having Dr. Furhman as a guest. And I do believe and encourage others to eat a plant based diet, will return to being a full vegan once this is over, and also encourage folks to buy organic with all the faults and falicies surrounding it.

Guilt aside, I grew up close to a superfund clean up site in a city with breast cancer clusters. One of our homes, which we lived in for 10 years, was built on land previously used for apple orchards (we never had a bug problem!) and there was a high tension wire in the front yard. And I have been consuming food, water and air replete with pesticides, insecticides and all sorts of toxins for 60 years. Four immediate family members have died of cancer, my Mom breast cancer.

I also did not notice any recommendation on the show for buying organic. Buying conventionally grown vegetables expose you not only to GMOs, but harmful pesticides. This was probably not the best time to watch Dr. Oz~but hey, Furhman may get a book sale out of it so maybe their purpose was fulfilled…just kidding.